The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (Paperback) | Released: 1 October 2002

For years we have believed in development. Indeed, with all its hopes of a more just and materially prosperous world, development has fascinated societies in both North and South. Looking at this collective fancy in retrospect, Gilbert Rist shows the underlying similarities of its various theories and strategies, and their shared inability to transform the world. He argues persuasively that development has always been a kind of collective delusion which in reality has simply promoted a widening of market relations despite the good intentions of its advocates. Now this era is over. Globalisation has taken over. Former development promises have been shelved and replaced by a new but narrower slogan, the struggle against poverty. Yet in spite of the failures of development, aggravated now by globalisation, we are told that growth -- which nobody would risk abandoning -- is still the only means of salvation. It is clear that the need for belief is stronger than any doubts about its actual wisdom. What, then, are the origins of this naive faith? Why have people put so much energy into proclaiming it and seeking to make it a reality? Why has it proved an illusion, and what future does it now have? These are some of the questions which this thoughtful and penetrating history of the concept of development explores. This book is an invitation to rethink contemporary problems and to prepare ourselves for what might be called the post-development era.

About the Author

Gilbert Rist has for many years been a leading Swiss scholar of development. Before joining the staff of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies (IUED) in Geneva, where he has been a professor since 1986, he first taught in Tunisia and then spent several years as Director of the Centre Europe-Tiers Monde. One of his principal intellectual interests has been to construct an anthology of modernity in which he sees Western society as being every bit as traditional and indeed exotic as any other. Professor Rist is the author of a number of intellectually pathbreaking books highly critical of conventional thinking in the field. These include: Il etait une fois le developpement (with Fabrizio Sabelli et al.), Editions dEn Bas, Lausanne, 1986. Le Nord perdu: Reperes pour lapres-developpement (with Majid Rahnema and Gustavo Esteva), Editions dEn Bas, Lausanne, 1992. La mythologie programmee: Leconomie des croyances dans la societe moderne (with Marie-Dominique Perrot and Fabrizio Sabelli), PUF, Paris, 1992. La culture, otage du developpement? (ed.), lHarmattan, Paris, 1994. La mondialisation des anti-societes: Espaces reves et lieux communes (ed.), Les Nouveaux Cahiers de lIUED, No. 6, IUED, Geneve; PUF, Paris, 1997. The present book is his first to be published in English. It has also been published: in French: Le developpement: Histoire dune croyance occidentale, Presse de Sciences Po., Paris, 1996 (2nd edition, 2001). in Italian: Lo Sviluppo: Sotira di una credenza occidentale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 1997. in Spanish: El desarrollo: Una ideologia del siglo XX, Los Libros de la Catarata, Madrid, 2002.